Understanding Organizational Behaviour: Key Characteristics and Elements for Managers

Introduction of Organisation Behaviour

Organisation Behaviour (in short called as OB) is concerned with the study of the behaviour and interaction of people in restricted or organized settings. It involves understanding people and predicting their behaviour, and knowledge of the means by which their behaviour is influenced and shaped. OB is thus of great concern to anyone who organizes, creates, orders, directs, manages, or supervises the activities of others. It is also of concern to those who build relationships between individuals, groups of people, and different parts of organisation between different organisations, for all these Activities are founded on human interactions.

1. Meaning of Organization - An organization is a place where a group of individuals with different skills and background are brought together to perform specific duties. Their tasks are supervised and coordinated by managers.
2. Meaning of Behavior - Behavior is a way of action. It is what a person does. More precisely, behavior can be defined as the observable and measurable activity of human being. It can include anything like decision making, handling of machine, communication with the other people, reaction or response to an order or instruction.

Meaning and definition of OB

It is the study and application of knowledge about how people act within organisations. IT IS A HUMAN TOOL FOR HUMAN BENEFIT AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.

• It is directly concerned with the understanding, predicting, and controlling of human behaviour.
• It represents the behavioural approach to management - not the whole of management.
• It is not to be equated with the industrial psychology. For E.g., organizational structure and management processes, say, decision making play a direct role in OB, but they are indirectly discussed in industrial psychology.
• It is directly concerned with the conceptual and human side of management, but not with the technical side.

Organisational behaviour has been defined by:

• Keith Davis: As a study of human behaviour at work.
• Fred Luthans: As understanding, prediction and control of human behaviour in the organisation.
• Stephen Robbins: As a study that investigates the impact, individuals, groups and structure have on human behaviour within the organisation.
• S. K. Kapoor: As a systematic study of actions and reactions, the people working in an organisation in order to improve the overall organisational performance.

Characteristics of OB

1. Behavioural Approach to Management – OB is a behavioural approach to management. It is a part of management related with analyzing behavior of human beings in group & organization. It is a distinct field of study.
2. Science as well as Art – OB is both science and art. It is a systematic body of knowledge about human behavior so it is considered as science. As an art, the knowledge of OB is applied to improve organizational effectiveness.
3. Human tool – Organizational behavior is a tool for human benefit which helps the manager in various areas. It also provides the education needed for creative thinking to avoid and solve human problems in organizations.
4. Action & goal oriented – OB is a goal directed discipline that studies human behavior and explain it in organizational context as well as helps in taking proper action to mould that individual behavior towards the goal achievement of organization.
5. Commonality of Interest – OB helps in providing commonality of interest between individual goals and organizational goals& objectives. It provides common goals that unite the variety of individual interests with the interest of organization.
6. Holistic Concept – OB is a holistic concept which relates people, groups, and whole organization as a system. It gives a broad view of people in organization and studies many factors that influence their behavior. It includes various dimensions, thus gives a broad view of human related issues & problems.
7. Integrating Approach – OB is an integrating approach of human, technical and ethical values at work which draws knowledge from various disciplines such as anthropology, Psychology, Law, Sociology, Economics, IT Political Science, engineering etc.
8. Cause and Effect Relationship – Human behavior is generally taken in terms of cause-and-effect relationship and not in philosophical terms. It helps in predicting the behavior of individuals. It provides generalizations that managers can use to anticipate the effect of certain activities on human behavior.
9. Organizational Behavior is a Branch of Social Sciences – Organizational behavior is heavily influenced by several other social sciences viz. psychology, sociology and anthropology. It draws a rich array of research from these disciplines.

Elements or Factors of O.B. 

There are 4 key elements of OB, which are as under

1. The People - An Organisation is a well-knit social system. People work in organisations. They constitute individuals and groups. Even in groups, there could be formal as well as informal classifications. People join organisations to achieve their objectives. Although people have a few things in common, each person is individualized, just as their palm prints. Heredity, endowment, social institutions contribute their share toward make up of individuals. The objective of Organization Behaviour is to develop a BETTER EMPLOYEE, A BETTER CITIZEN AND A BETTER MAN.
2. The structure - In organisations we find two types of social systems, namely, the formal, and the informal, both of which coexist. It means that an organization's environment is dynamic, and not static. All parts are interdependent and each part is influenced by other parts. People need organisations, and organisations need people, is to state the obvious. If there is no sense of mutuality, there is any reason why at all organisations cannot attain their objectives without the people element there in, and so is true in reverse.
3. The Environment - All organisations operate within an external environment. An organisation is a larger part of a social system. The external environment influences the Attitudes of people, affect work conditions, and provide resources.
4. The Technology - Technology helps people work with machines, tools, and the like. Thus, they are able to produce more of goods and services, and offer them to the society. It helps people to do better work, but technology elements have both cost and benefit implications.

The important fundamental concepts of organisational behaviour are as follows:

1. Every individual is different - Every person is different with respect to his/her age, education, knowledge, skills, attitude, physical health, mental health, personality, etc. Therefore, each person should be treated separately while managing people.
2. Every individual is a complete person - The employee has his/her individual knowledge, skills, attitude, opinions, views, likes-dislikes, family background, social background, biases/ prejudices, etc. People spend more than half their lifetime in the organisations for which they work. Naturally, they expect to be happy on-the-job as well as off-the-job.
3. All behaviour has Cause-effect Relationship - Every person behaves as per his/her thought process and believes that the behaviour is correct, because the person has certain beliefs and faith. It is necessary for managers to understand these beliefs and faiths of the people and also the cause-effect relationship behind the behaviour, if they want to be effective in their managerial functions.
4. Every individual has self-esteem - People are different from machines and materials. They can think, smile, laugh; they have feelings and emotions. They have self-respect and prestige. They are live entities, unlike machines or tools and equipment. Therefore, they should not be treated like machines or materials.
5. An organisation is a social system - an organisation is a social system. Therefore, the organisational behaviour of people depends upon the social and psychological values and systems.
6. Mutual interests are inter-dependent - As organisation needs people, people too need the organisation. The organisation wants to fulfil its objectives of production of goods and services. The employees working in an organisation have their personal goals, for example, individual career goals, family goals, etc.
7. A total view of the organisation – the organisational structure, the management-employee relationships, the interpersonal and the inter-group relationships, the total personality of the employee, and the organisation as a total system. This helps managers understand human behaviour in the organisation. In turn, this results in the necessary co-ordination between the three major factors viz., organisation, management and employees.

OB is a Behavioural Science

Behavioural science (Beh, Sc.) is considered to be a new science of an ancient subject. The primary difference between beh.sc and other social sciences lies in its methodology, a beh.sc. Depend upon rigorous scientific methodology in the collection of empirical data on human behaviour. The other social sciences use indirect documentary practice in building their body of knowledge, why man behaves the way he does is a very complex process. The problem is so great that many people argue that there can be no precise science of behaviour. Human beings cannot be effectively controlled.

Contributing disciplines to OB

OB is applied beh.sc and is built upon contributions from a number of behavioural disciplines. They are- Psychology, Sociology, and social psychology. Anthropology and Political science. Contributions of psychology operate at MICRO levels, while other contributions operate at the MACRO level.

1. PSYCHOLOGY - Individual or general psychology has been defined in many ways- It is called the science of soul, the science of mind, the science of behaviour. Psychology seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes the behaviour of men. Psychology attempts to study individual behaviour. Psychologists concern themselves with perception, learning, personality, training, job satisfaction, leadership and motivation.
2. SOCIOLOGY - Sociologists have contributed to the areas of group dynamics, organisation theory and structure, bureaucracy, power and conflict. Sociology focuses attention on people in relation to fellow human beings.
3. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - These deals with interpersonal behaviour. In a broad sense, we can say that social behaviour involves one of the three basic reactions. When an individual meets another individual, there is social interaction. Bach individual affects the other individual with whom he comes into contact and is in turn affected by them. Secondly, the Individual may be interacting with a group- Then also, behaviour gets affected. Finally, interaction of one group with the other groups.
4. ANTHROPOLOGY - Anthropology is the science of man. Anthropologists study society, particularly the primitive ones to learn about human beings and their activities. How we behave is a function of culture- Our individual values system will affect our attitudes and behaviour on the job. Thus, anthropology teaches how our culture affects organizational Behaviour.

Why is the study of OB important for managers? 

With the growing number of organisations, rapidly changing technologies and increasing complexity of organisational structures, the importance of people in the organisations cannot be over-emphasized. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, people were considered ‘commodities' that could be ‘hired' and ‘fired' but, during the last 100 years, things have changed very fast. Both, the employers and the employees have realized that the relationship between them is not that of ‘Master Servant', but like ‘Partners in progress'. Therefore, understanding people has become important, if not more important, as understanding machines and materials. People are called ‘Human Resources' because they are not commodities, but have become resources. Managements have become aware that they have to treat their employees as human beings and not as machines or materials. Therefore, understanding the ‘Organisational Behaviour’ of their employees has become extremely important for the managers of tomorrow. In the modern world, organisations are becoming increasingly complex with rapidly changing technology. As a result, organisations are demanding more and more from their employees. People are living resources with feelings, emotions and responses unlike machines or commodities. They cannot be treated like machines or materials but need psychological treatment. Hence, the study of organisational behaviour is of utmost importance today.

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